How To Obliterate Writer's Block

I finally fixed my writer's block. And what I learned was that I wasn't lacking in motivation, time, desire, or energy (as I previously believed). What I was actually lacking was organization. In ALL aspects of my life.

I used to tell myself:

I'll finish Chapter 2 this week.

I'll write in the morning when I have the most brain power.

The week is pretty busy, but I'll slip in some writing at some point.

I'm working from home on this day, so things will be quiet enough to write.

Literally nothing is happening this week so I should be able to write like 10,000 words, right?

Wrong. None of that ever happened. All my goals and intentions would fly out the window the moment the work from my real life job rolled in. I had to keep track of so many moving parts that compiled with the stories I'm writing was too much for me to handle. It usually ended up in burn out.

The day after a long day of work that I thought would be lighter and give me some time to get some writing in would turn into an all-day brain fog. I would literally just sit and stare at a monitor for hours, doomscrolling my socials, clipping my nails, doing literally ANYTHING other than writing.

I was fed up. I wanted to write. I have SO many ideas, SO many works in progress. I NEED to write. But the burn out was real. It would suck out all of my creativity, all of my drive, everything that made my happy place (my writing headspace) somewhere I didn't want to be. And that was when I knew I had to fix it.

Here's how I did it:

Step 1: Get It All Out Of Your Head

This is the first misconception we need to deal with: Planners are not for planning. Crazy right? Don't get me wrong, I friggin love planners. I used to get the Hobonichi Cousin every year. I tried Bullet Journaling. I now have an Erin Condren planner, and I love it! I got a special Star Wars cover with Star Wars stickers. It's super cute. I use it every single day!

But that still doesn't make it useful for actually planning.

Here's what planners are actually good for:

- Writing down appointments, meetings, events

- Remembering birthdays, anniversaries, vacations

- Keeping track of habits

And I definitely use my planner for all of that stuff. But not for planning. My Erin Condren planner is for aesthetics. I like to see my month or week at a glance, in cute highlighter colors all nice and neat. I like to check off the days I've done some reading or listened to my scriptures or meditated. It's great for that!

But what happens when I need to make a list from here to planet Jupiter? What happens when I get a crazy idea for a scene or a plot or a character and I need to write three pages of information in three seconds? Where do I put that in my pretty planner? How do I find that later? And more importantly, how can I make my messy, spur of the moment thoughts look pretty in that space? Because honestly, if I see something ugly on my planner, I don't wanna look at it. (That's a Libra problem though. Don't worry if you don't suffer from Fall Baby Syndrome.)

So what did I do? I needed a place where I could be messy. I needed a place that said no to white out and yes to endless strikeouts, outlandish ideas, and checklists galore. I needed a Messy Notebook.

My Messy Notebook consists of pages of brain-dumped ideas for my stories, lists for my personal and work life, lists for my STORIES, and everything in between. Ah, but I didn't just need lists. I needed something to make my lists make sense. I could always write a list until my hand cramped and fell off, but if my list didn't help me organize my life, then my list was useless. (See Step 2 for refinement.)

The idea still stands. I have my Messy Notebook available for when I need to "Get It All Out Of My Head". Apparently I need to do this very often. Especially for work stuff. Because my brain just doesn't have enough bandwidth to hold all of this information all the time. I can't be thinking about personal reminders, work obligations AND character personalities all at the same time. Something needs to be housed somewhere else. Preferably outside of my brain.

The fact that I was juggling so much, trying to remember so much, and trying to do so much was the reason for my brain fog. I ended up forgetting to do EVERYTHING. And that, my friends, was not a fun time. But now that we understand the need to brain dump your life away, let's refine things just a little bit further.

Step 2: Make A System

I mentioned that I make lists in a certain way. I sometimes just jot down reminders and things I need to do, but I always go back and give these tasks a few qualifiers. Here's what I mean.

Not all tasks are created equal. Some require more time, more brain energy, more physical energy, etc. Batching similar tasks has helped me not only to DO these tasks but also to take away the decision fatigue that comes with trying to think about what I should do next.

Let's look at a quick list:

• Make the bed

• Put away laundry

• Plan my week ahead

At first, you may consider all of these tasks to be "administrative" tasks. They are all things you have to do to clean up and organize your things and your life. But two of these tasks require more physical exertion, whereas the other task requires more cognitive exertion. If you were to, say, make your bed, then sit down with your Erin Condren planner to plan-not-plan your week, do you think you'll want to get up afterward to put away laundry?

However, if you were to do both of the more physically demanding tasks together, you can sit down afterward, switch brain modes only once, and proceed with your weekly planning.

Consider a few things when you are making lists:

• The time it will take to perform the task

• The type of task that it is (administrative, creative, work-related, etc.)

• The urgency of the task and it sequential importance (eg: if I don't do this, this other thing will suffer)

Create your list with three columns. Column 1 will be for your task name. Column 2 will be for the type of task that it is. Column 3 will be for how long that task will take. (See Step 4 for advanced tips.)

But wait! There's more!

When I realized that my workload was the cause of my burn out, I started to create a system of checklists that would ensure I would never have to keep anything stored in my brain EVER AGAIN. I used to write this system in my Messy Notebook, the same steps I needed to do and NOT forget about every single time. It was exhausting. I knew that this system would work, but I had to refine it. I didn't need the system to work. I needed the system to work FOR ME. But as it stood, I was working for the System.

So I turned to Google docs. In docs, I was able to create a template that mirrored the system I had made in my Messy Notebook. Either way, I wanted to keep my Messy Notebook only for personal and writing to do's anyway. So this worked out really well. And guess what? I didn't have to rewrite the checklist pages again and again because all I had to do was duplicate my template page and rename it for the meeting I had to work on. And that was it!

Work smarter, not harder.

Another more minor change I made was that I started properly utilizing Gmail's filtered inbox. I used to have so many emails in my inbox that I would have to go through and clear out all the time. And it was so ugly. (Remember the Fall Baby Syndrome? It's back!)

I hate seeing a ton of emails that I have to eventually touch and make some kind of decision on. As an example, I get the weekly Astrology newsletter from Sanctuary Astrology. I like to leave it in my inbox so that I can see how screwed up my every day is going to be that week. (lol) By separating it (as well as all the ads from companies), I can easily spot things to immediately delete while still keeping my inbox looking less overwhelming.

Such a simple hack, yet life changing.

Another tool I've been using is StoryWright, which was created by a friend of mine. By a writer, for writers. I cannot tell you how much this app has saved my writing life. I used to have notes all over the place (on Notion, Gdocs, Word, etc), and I could never find where I had written that specific detail I was always looking for. StoryWright changed all of that. It's easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and most importantly, I can actually find what I'm looking for.

To recap, I still use my planner in conjunction with my Messy Notebook. Planner is for events and keeping track of things. Messy Notebook for my massive to do lists and brain dumps. I also created a system for my work process to ensure I don't forget anything, and I can easily open it at work in Gdocs. I organized my Gmail inbox to reduce anxiety about seeing tons of emails, and I use StoryWright for all my writing needs.

So what's next?

Step 3: Test Out Your System

I bet you're wondering... Did she just come up with these ideas from one second to the next? And while yes, I admit some of these did come from my ever trusty Shower Muse, these are things I gradually worked on over time. As I mentioned, I've tried all kinds of planning methods, even using Notion templates at one point, to try and get my life in order. And all of it pretty much failed.

So here's the important takeaway from this step: Just because you develop a system, that doesn't mean it'll work. That doesn't mean it won't need tweaking. Sometimes we have these vague ideas about how things will work or how long they will take. But if I try to guess how much time it will actually take me to do something, I'll almost always get it wrong. Blame my little neurospicy brain.

That's why you have to go into these systems with the mindset of testing them. Don't just create them and expect them to work, you have to put them through the ringer. You have to dive into your most difficult, most complicated project and see how they fair. And if they fail? Your system doesn't work.

Test your systems. It doesn't matter how many tests you run or how many times you change it. Make the system work for you. You don't work for the system.

Which leads me into...

Step 4: Revise! Revise! Revise!

If at first you don't succeed, revise the holy heck out of it. Remember how I said that I tried to implement my work checklist system into my Messy Notebook? And it was annoying? Yeah, I had to change that. I knew that it wouldn't be sustainable long term. I had done it for a month or two, and I was already pissed off about it. Having to rewrite things again and again? That's not saving me time. That's giving me a bigger headache.

Sometimes, all it takes is an easy fix. A simple tweak.

Sometimes, you have to tear it all down and start from scratch. This is okay. Trust the process. Write down your findings, your feelings and frustrations. Use this to your advantage when you move on to build your next system. That's how you make things better.

And now, we put it all together.

Step 5: Get Your Creative Mojo Flowing Again

I'm the type of person that is always thinking about stuff. I have thoughts popping up in my head constantly. If I don't write it down? Forget it. Poof! It's gone. Bye! And that's super stressful, especially if it's something I needed for work or for my stories.

The idea of writing it all down, getting it all out of my head, and storing it in places that will not only remember it for me, but be there easily accessible for when I need it, has revolutionized my entire life. Not just because I don't forget things anymore, but... (and here's the important part) I have more space (bandwidth) in my brain for creative writing.

It's really weird how that works. I always thought that I needed to be in a certain headspace to write. I needed to sit down with a certain drink, light a certain smelling candle, listen to a certain song, tune everybody out, move to a secluded place with no distractions, nothing. Just me and my writing. But it turns out that I can easily tune everything out when I really want to. It happens all the time. I just had to figure out what that flow state was for me.

And it turns out that flow state is just me getting all the junk out of my head so that my well of creativity could be filled again with what I need to write. This process took months, and a lot of trial and error, but it can be easily copied and pasted into anyone's life. Molded to fit your personal needs and goals.

tl;dr: I can write any time, any place, in any condition, whether I'm swamped with work, distracted by family and real life, or not. All I had to do was get organized in the messiest way I know how.